Many products such as items of furniture and the like are formed of various parts cut from panels of various materials, assembled together to form selected configurations, secured together by various means and possibly finished to complete the assembly of the products. Often, such parts are formed on programmable CNC routers from panels of materials. Typically, such parts are formed on such machines by selecting a panel of material of suitable dimensions, loading and detachably securing such panels on the worktables of such machines and then operating the machines to guide one or more cutting tools in forming the parts. Such operations normally consist of forming various indentations such as slots and the like in the faces and edges of the parts, drilling openings through the parts and severing the panels to provide parts of various profiles.
In following the aforementioned procedure, it has been the practice in the prior art to load a panel on the worktable of the machine, operate the machine to form the required indentations in the exposed, upper side of the panel and then sever the panel to provide the desired profiles of the parts. The unused portion of the panel is then removed from the worktable, the cut parts remaining on the table requiring machining on the underside thereof are inverted and suitably positioned on the worktable, and the machine being suitably programmed is operated to provide the required machining on the inverted sides of the parts.
Although such practice has been found to be suitable in producing parts of required configurations, it further has been found to require excess material handling and be unduly time consuming, thereby adversely affecting productivity. It therefore is the principal object of the present invention to provide an improved method of producing a set of parts from a panel of material comparable to the method as described, in which material handling is minimized, execution time is reduced, and productivity correspondingly is materially improved.